#front #justtransition #endthebad

After an exhaustive nationwide search, we are proud to introduce Janaira Ramirez, our new Oregon Just Transition Alliance Organizer!

Janaira was born and raised in New York City, the oldest of three daughters born to Dominican parents. She relocated to Portland this week, but began remotely onboarding with OPAL at the beginning of September. Growing up between New York City and the Dominican Republic exposed Janaira to the politics of transnational migration at an early age. “I witnessed unjust governmental as well as day-to-day interactions between migrant populations in the United States as well as in the Dominican Republic.,” Janaira says. “It really made me aware of how drastic the power dynamic shifts from setting to setting.” She was stuck at a very early age that an oppressed group in the one setting may perpetuate oppression onto another group in another setting. Having one foot in the US where she was born and raised, but the other foot in her parents’ home country made relationships of power a point of interest for Janaira, “even before I was able to critically think about the dynamics I was witnessing and experiencing,” she says.

Janaira began organizing around public education reforms and food justice/food security as a youth organizer of The Brotherhood-SisterSol in Harlem, NY. “As a youth organizer I was not only able to deepen my passion social justice, but I was overjoyed by the democratization processes we took as a team to ensure that our common needs and values and those of the different communities we were part of were represented in each of our campaigns,” she says. During her undergraduate studies at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Janaira obtained a Bachelor of Arts in political science. “I focused a lot of political theory and the notions of power, public policy, and conducted data driven research on food security in the United States,” she says. During her time at Wheaton, Janaira had the opportunity to travel overseas and learn from and share with communities in Ahmedabad in India, São Paulo in Brazil, and Dakar in Senegal, as experience she describes as “amazing.”

“My studies and research in each of the three countries focused on how marginalized communities changed the narrative, from focusing on the ways in which they experience oppression to instead focus on how they organized, built resistance, and launched initiatives.,” Janaira says of communities who organized to combat displacement, food injustice, and environmental degradation. She focused on the specific initiatives local community groups organized and implemented to become self-determinant and to alleviate the varying needs of their communities.

“It was motivational and uplifting to learn from groups working to dignify labor and dignify the informal economy which was so prevalent and the main source of employment in many communities,” she says. Janaira worked alongside groups organizing against slum relocation programs that often isolated slum dwellers too far from accessible means of transportation and too far from their places of employment. She studied groups advocating for clean waterways and clean air, a major concern in many of the places she lived these studies overseas. She learned the stories of groups who started and cultivated urban gardens to combat food insecurity and provide their community with sources of employment. She saw groups re-imagine cities to become better connected to the nearby villages, as migrant workers do not want to leave their homes and families but more employment opportunities often exist in cities and therefore rural-urban daily migration was necessary. This wealth of experience give Janaira the unique qualifications to organize the statewide movement for a Just Transition, build power in communities living at the intersection of many oppressions, and build solidarity across communities with interests sometimes understood to compete.

“Having the amazing opportunity to learn from and share with these groups really pushed me further into social justice organizing work,” Janaira says. “I am stoked to continue doing this work with OPAL and continuing to learn.”

An extractive economic system is rooted in and perpetuated by the extraction of our most precious resources. It is a constant state of digging up our resources, burning them, and then dumping the results with little to no regard for pollution’s contamination, toxicity, and desecration of Earth, our sacred home. Human labor is exploited across many sectors, with a long history of workers’ health not being taken into consideration. The purpose of exploiting labor to desecrate resources has been the constant concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few, with little challenge to that dominance. In other words, the manifestation of this economic system is placing profit over people.

We see how the fossil fuel industry advances this purpose. Coal, oil and gas barons, the wealthiest corporations and individuals on Earth, put profit over people and exhaust human capacity, and perpetuate the idea that their system is inevitable and necessary, when this is false and damaging.

For these reasons and many more, the Oregon Just Transition Alliance has voted to officially oppose the construction of the Pacific Connector Pipeline and Jordan Cove Terminal.

The Jordan Cove Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Export Terminal and Pacific Connector Pipeline is a significant threat to indigenous sovereignty and tribal treaty rights, human health, and planetary survival. Cultural resources, traditional tribal territories and burial grounds are threatened by both the pipeline route and the LNG export facility. Additionally, the project would impact waters and wildlife of current, historical, and spiritual importance to the Tribes. The Karuk, Yurok, and Klamath Tribes have all come out in opposition to opposing the Jordan Cove LNG Export Terminal and the Pacific Connector Pipeline.

In solidarity with national and global fights we must seek solutions that build and grow the regenerative economy, which don’t continue to be dependent on the extraction of our resources and the erasure of sacred lands.

Please join Oregon PSR for a fun presentation of “The Folly of Frack,” to be followed by a presentation on the proposed Jordan Cove Energy Project/Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline and on-site comment writing. August 13 from 6:30-8:30pm, RSVP HERE

Join community members on Thursday, August 16 from 11am-12pm at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) office in Medford for a rally and delivery of over 17,000 public comments demanding DEQ denies clean water act permits and puts to rest the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal and Pacific Connector fracked gas pipeline. RSVP HERE

Oregon Just Transition Alliance is grounded in core principles that center community resilience and inter-community collaborative resistance. We are aiming not only for systems change but also a cultural shift from anti-immigrant and refugee policies that contribute to the exploitation of those hit first and worst by such harsh immigration enforcement tactics.

Therefore, the Steering Committee of OJTA has voted to oppose Ballot Measure 105, a measure that will throw out Oregon’s sanctuary state law. This law that has been working for more than 30 years to protect Oregonians from unfair racial profiling. If Ballot Measure 105 passes, it could open the door to racial profiling and families being torn apart, simply because someone is perceived to be an undocumented immigrant.

Immigrants are a vital part of our member communities; they are farmworkers, workers, volunteers, activists, organizers, and more importantly human beings. Our communities are stronger and more vibrant because of immigrants.

Did you miss the the last Just Transition Webinar? See the recap and recording below.

Divesting from sources that continue to fuel the extractive economy and exploit our communities requires bold leadership, and commitment from those who support us to follow frontline leadership.

On our last webinar, we heard from Jamie Trinkle, a Senior Campaign and Research Coordinator at Enlace working against transnational corporations and building capacity at partner organizations to divest from prisons through their National Prison Divestment Campaign. Jamie shared how Enlace is utilizing divestment as a tactic to impact multiple targets that profit from locking our community members behind bars. We have the right to choose where our money is invested, and it should be invested to help our communities succeed. Jaime also spoke on the importance of having impacted communities in the decision making process of how money divested should be reinvested in our communities.

Ananda Lee Tan, Campaigns Director of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) spoke towards the importance of moving money that has historically fueled how decisions or policies get made. Ananda spoke about the work of the Climate Justice Alliance in their campaign Invest in Our Power, in particular with a focus on philanthropy to address three critical conditions. First, the resource disparity between environmental justice groups and environmental groups. Second, the capacity difference between environmental justice groups and traditional environmentalists, and compensating the time of environmental justice groups in order to join the conversation. Third, the recognition of the diverse theories of change of environmental justice groups.

Studies show that a farmworker doesn’t live past the age of 50 or 60; this is an example of the bad that the extractive economy brings to the life of a farmworker. Working in the field is extensive work and brings issues of wage theft, abuse towards women and children, pesticides, unhealthy housing, anti-immigration laws and more. Edgar shared how the #JustTransition fits in within farmworker organizing. “The economy that we are living in is very extractive not only to our earth, to all our resources, but to our bodies and our labor”.

For C2C building the new requires involving the real life experiences of farmworkers. To learn more about how C2C is utilizing People’s Movement Assemblies and Tribunals to meaningfully engage farmworkers to speak for themselves and seek the solutions that they will like to see in motion, check out the full video.

Join C2C, an organization that is striving to reclaim our humanity by redefining power in order to end settler colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy in their external and internalized forms.

A lot is happening between now and September and we continue building power through a Just Transition. Want to learn more and volunteer with us? Sign up here and we’ll keep you updated for organizing support and/or frontline actions.

On Sunday, April 29th we commemorated the People’s Climate Movement for Climate, Jobs and Justice with the first in our upcoming series of six Oregon Just Transition Alliance Webinars to highlight the strategies for a Just Transition. This webinar focused on the first key strategy of “End the Bad” which recognizes that we live in an economy that is exploitable of our labor, our resources for the purpose and benefit of a few. As we transition to an economy that encompasses both the need to end the extractive economy and a vision for healthy, thriving, life affirming and connected local economies in its place, we need to include communities and workers in the conversation.

As natural gas continues to be touted as the transition fuel of choice, the industry’s extraction and rush to build infrastructure and its consequences have been coming under increased scrutiny. Natural gas pipelines and compressor stations are associated with specific risks and health problems, which frequently bring the most harm to low income communities and communities of color, who are often given little or no choice about hosting gas infrastructure in their communities in the first place.

We’re excited to build power this month with our friends at Rogue Climate. Allie Rosenbluth, Community Organizer at Rogue Climate, lead us on a deep dive into the nearly decade-long fight to stop the proposed Pacific Connector Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Pipeline and associated Jordan Cove LNG Export Terminal in Coos Bay. This “zombie” fossil fuel project, noted for having been determined “not in the public’s best interest” and rejected twice within past four years by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, was redesigned and proposed by Canadian-based Pembina in January 2017. Banking on significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry in 2016 election, Pembina and other pro-project groups including the Portland Business Alliance are hoping to see the pipeline and terminal in service by 2024.

Like most extractive projects, the life-cycle of LNG subject our frontline communities to a host of environmental threats. This 233-mile pipeline running through southern Oregon would critically endanger traditional tribal territories, cultural resources including salmon runs, and burial grounds. The Karuk, Hoopa, Yurok, and Klamath Tribes have all passed resolutions opposing the pipeline. Additionally exporting LNG would raise domestic prices of gas. It’s important to note that utility increases disproportionately impact low income rate payers. The company is promising that anywhere from 1,000-3,000 temporary construction jobs will be created by this project however many of these workers will be from outside of local communities, creating temporary workers camps that have been associated with increased violence on women (especially Indigenous women), crimes, drug usage, and higher rent and costs of living”.

“Say it with me, fracked gas is not a bridge fuel”, Allie remarks. “The gas industry likes to tell folks that we have to rely on fracked gas as a bridge fuel from coal and oil to renewables.”

Say it loud! If you want to join the fight stopping this project follow Rogue Climate and NoLNGExports and sign up to take action here to learn how you can support to stop this project. (@NoLNGExports) Rogue Climate (@RogueClimate)

Resources:

A report released by Oil Change International details, for the first time, the full accounting of greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the proposed Jordan Cove LNG Export terminal and Pacific Connector fracked gas Pipeline project in Oregon.